I’m just going to say it. The Democratic Party seems to be turning into a death cult. It reminds me increasingly of the murderous following that developed around the 1960s psychopath, Charles Manson, which came to be known as the Manson Family.
For those too young to remember, or need a short refresher, Charles Manson was a career criminal and amateur musician and songwriter. He lived on the fringes of Los Angeles in the 1960s after spending much of his youth in Ohio and West Virginia committing petty crimes and being incarcerated. He eventually wound up in California and spent time in prison, and then in Washington state, where a fellow inmate taught him to play guitar.
Manson became involved in drug experimentation, including LSD (reportedly as part of a CIA program). While living in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco in the late 1960s, he began to preach his own brand of philosophy that married up scientology, Dale Carnegie, and the Beatles. He attracted a following of mostly female fans, largely by manipulating troubled personalities with drugs and his strange proselytizing. They lived in a communal house in Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles. Combining LSD and mind-control, Manson sought to have all his “family” completely submit to his will.
Beginning in 1969, Manson and his followers committed a series of murders in California, the most notorious of which were the Tate-LaBianca murders. Manson ordered four of his followers, three female and one male, to go to a luxurious home near Beverly Hills that was occupied by 26-year-old film actress Sharon Tate, who was 8 ½ months pregnant, and three of her friends. Manson told his four disciples to “totally destroy” everyone in the house “as gruesome as you can.” Manson’s followers didn’t disappoint.
The mayhem and murders of the home’s occupants after the Manson followers broke in were incredibly brutal. They were shot, stabbed, beaten and hung. In addition to Tate and her three friends, the baby in Tate’s womb died, as did a hapless friend of the home’s caretaker who happened to drive up to the property shortly before the start of the rampage.
The following night, Manson ordered his followers to murder supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in their Los Angeles area estate. Their murders were equally gruesome.
The perpetrators were soon identified and apprehended, and their trials became a spectacle. Manson would carve an ‘X’ into his forehead, while the female defendants in the murder trials would duplicate the mark on their own foreheads, followed by other members of the Manson Family who were not on trial, but were holding vigils outside the courthouse. (Manson, with his penchant for theatricality, would later turn the ‘X’ into a swastika.)
In August 1969, President Richard Nixon complained that the media were trying to glamorize the Manson Family members, which resonates today, as we see the media glamorize Luigi Mangione, the killer of a healthcare executive. Charles Manson tried to physically attack Judge Charles Older, overseeing his trial, in the courtroom, prompting the judge to arm himself subsequently. Eventually all those charged were convicted and incarcerated for the murders. Manson would die in prison in 2017.
The cultural phenomenon that followed the Manson killings was shocking. Former Weather Underground member, Bernadine Dohrn, who later became a law professor and wife of Barack Obama’s pal, Bill Ayres, said of the murders: “Dig it, first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the pig Tate's stomach! Wild!"
We are now witnessing a shocking celebratory reaction of Charlie Kirk’s horrifying public assassination among many on America’s left and in the Democratic Party. Teachers, professors, physicians, lawyers, and corporate executives have mocked or praised Kirk’s murder. Indeed, the No. 1 demographic celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder is reportedly professors and teachers. One can find countless videos posted to social media of disgusting displays of individuals celebrating the brutal slaying of this man, whose uniquely effective debating skills were too much for them to bear.
New polling data reveals a stunning level of acceptance of political violence on the part of American liberals. The question, “Do you generally consider it to be acceptable or unacceptable for a person to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose?” was met with nearly a quarter of individuals who identified as “very liberal” – 24 percent – responding that it was “always or usually acceptable.” Three percent of those who identified as “very conservative” agreed with that sentiment.
Some Republicans have expressed concern about the potential development on the American left of an “assassination culture” in America.
Just as Charles Manson’s “family” of drug-addled psychopaths had been conditioned to completely submit to the will of their leader, too many Democrats seem to have lost their humanity and have been conditioned to embrace or accept homicide as a tactic in realizing their goals. The same penchants for narcissism, nihilism and public spectacle that drove Manson are what we are witnessing among much of America’s left today.
Charlie Kirk was the nice guy on the conservative side who thought that his political opponents could be reasoned with by using logical arguments. It cost him his life. My fervent hope is that the Democratic Party does not continue its descent into Manson-like psychopathy. Better yet, maybe many of its members will wake up and leave that party altogether.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 39 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News 48 Hours and NBC News Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)